Chapter 25: The Saintess and the Woodcutter (3)
“The department head’s office is not an infirmary.”
The Saintess said something strange. Ivan tilted his head sideways.
At the place that passes for an infirmary, wouldn’t they just smear a bit of healing potion on the trauma, or at most have a freshly ordained priest cast a heal, and that’s it?
Does she mean students should have to undergo such a horrific experience even in a place that has an actual Saintess, of all things?
Watching Ivan’s expression, the Saintess pounded her chest and vented her indignation. (Ivan did not bother to avert his gaze even at the violent shaking. Because the Saintess is religious.)
“No! I have my own work too! Do you know how busy I am? I only took office this year myself! There’s no handover, and new students and undergraduates and professors all keep trooping in to chatter at me, and not one class curriculum is set up. What is wrong with this university!”
“Hm.”
“Hm.”
Watching the Saintess denounce the backward pre-modern educational process, Ivan and Enrique nodded simultaneously.
There was nothing to say, but agreement was necessary all the same.
Ivan looked away from the pitiable religious diligently lamenting her own circumstances. The department head’s office had a quiet, elegant charm.
Whether it was the taste of the department head before the Saintess took office, or the Saintess’s own taste, he couldn’t say. But there were a great many plants.
Orchid……? Is it an orchid? Ivan, who had no particular grounding in plants, killed time gripping and stroking the leaf of a stylish plant drooping luxuriantly from one pot. (He is a gardener.)
Snap.
With a tok, the orchid’s leaf broke off. Of all things it was the thickest and finest stem, so it snapped all the more crisply.
Ivan shifted his gaze without a single change of expression. Fortunately the Saintess seemed not to have noticed. She was raging away at Enrique about her classes.
New World, was it. He felt there had been a scene rather like this in that noir film. He rotated the pot expressionlessly. The pot changed direction without a sound and hid the broken leaf.
“No, yes, I know it’s hard, Patty, I understand perfectly. So turn the light down already, would you. I was in the wrong.”
“Why not take this opportunity to convert? I await you always with an open heart, Lady Enrique.”
“That sounds less like conversion and more like passing on……”
The Saintess is the person closest to heaven in this world. Excepting the Pope, that is.
Which is to say, the divine power bursting out according to her emotions was crushing Enrique in real time at that very moment. It might be a trick of the eye, but to Ivan it looked as though Enrique’s frame had shrunk a little.
Enrique spoke carefully, in a subdued posture.
“Um. Mm. Ah, that’s right. Patty, there’s this thing. Don’t be shocked and hear me out. I came to say this and forgot all about it. Look at my memory.”
“Yes, and before you speak, please tell me it’s a less shocking fact than 50 critically injured new students.”
Since Enrique making a fuss was familiar enough, the Saintess lifted her teacup with a gentle hand. She’d been getting thirsty from all that impassioned speech.
Enrique laughed, hoo hoo, and opened her mouth.
“This fellow was actually dragged in.”
“Yes, well, when the orphanage director suddenly said he was going to be a gardener, I did think of going to see Elise. To ask what she thinks she’s doing to a retired man.”
“No, you fool. He was dragged in. You know. Like Max. From another world.”
“Pfft?!”
The Saintess spat out her tea with a cough, eyes brimming. After coughing a while longer, she barely managed to compose herself.
“Why are you only telling me this now……?”
“He thought he was the only one, apparently. Is this fellow the sort to seek out psychological counselling.”
“Good heavens……”
The Saintess looked at Ivan and swallowed for a moment. She brought out her words in a trembling voice.
“How lonely he must have been…… and from that shock, the beard…… Brother Kirilts……”
“No. That is not the reason.”
“It’s all right. It’s all ok……”
The Saintess wore a benevolent smile as she warmly clasped Ivan’s hand. Divine power spread faintly and flowed through Ivan’s veins. It was warm.
Even as Enrique convulsed and retreated to the far end of the sofa, the Saintess kept smiling warmly at Ivan.
“It’s all right, Brother…… you are not strange. There have been many like you, and there will be more hereafter. Ah, Lord. Guide this poor lamb……”
“I find this present situation strange and awkward.”
“That’s only to be expected. Only to be expected…… the Hero was the same way……”
The day she’d been overcome on hearing he’d retired and was running an orphanage came back to her.
This pitiable young man, despite the cruel war he’d endured since childhood, had grown up this steadfast and cultivated a good heart capable of embracing unfortunate children.
Was that not itself the proof of the Lord’s existence.
The Saintess had gladly supported Ivan’s retirement, sending no small sum every year as donations. She had even named the orphanage herself!
And on top of that, look at Ivan’s present state.
Orphanages are fundamentally poor. This is partly a matter of donations, but it was also the fault of wicked directors trying to make a business of orphans.
Because this was a world where incidents of taking large donations under the table and selling the orphans thus raised into the back alleys were reported several times a year.
But this man…… is diligently earning wage income, wearing filthy work clothes and wiping his sweat with a scorched towel.
Plainly it could only be in order to raise the children in greater abundance.
“Ahh……”
And he had even been a person of another world? And still he was a person who took in and raised this world’s orphans, “alien” orphans with no connection to him whatsoever……?
How could it be?
The Saintess’s eyes reddened.
“Brother Kirilts……”
“I’d rather you didn’t call me by that name.”
“I like your baptismal name, Brother.”
“I was far too young when it was decided.”
Ivan withdrew his hand, glaring sidelong at Enrique, who wore a mischievous expression. The Saintess made the sign of the cross naturally and laid a hand over her chest.
“I was utterly certain that you were a sodomite, Brother.”
“Khup……!”
Enrique choked and thumped her chest repeatedly.
“Well, considering the ladies you rejected so coldly, Brother, how could I not.”
“……I had circumstances.”
“Of course. Of course.”
A Royal Guardsman was not permitted to become privately intimate with nobles or persons of influence.
The period when he was making his name as “little” Ivan, that is, the period when his stock in the marriage market shot vertically upward, happened also to be when he was a Royal Guardsman.
And with his objective being a return to Earth, how could he play at romance.
That sentiment hasn’t greatly changed even now. If anything has changed, it’s perhaps only that he is no longer a much-watched piece of merchandise.
“It’s because of your vow, isn’t it? A brother as devout as you, it must surely have been because of the vow made at your baptism……”
The three evangelical counsels vowed at baptism: poverty, chastity, obedience.
Ivan’s appearance is the very picture of poverty; he passed 30 without a single romantic rumor, so he is the very picture of chastity; and he laid down honor and rank alike to return to the plain fields, so he is the very picture of obedience.
Devotion as though drawn in a picture……! The Saintess nodded.
“Do not become a priest. You truly would be unable to marry.”
“……Hm.”
“But if you keep living chastely like this, perhaps…… perhaps the Lord may bestow His favor. The Lord is one who embraces with love, and love between one person and another is the greatest blessing beneath heaven.”
“……Hm……”
“I must visit your orphanage today, Brother. It’s nearly time to finish work, so let us go together.”
“You said you hadn’t finished your work.”
“In this school the only one above me is the chancellor, and beneath this heaven the only one above me is the Lord God, Enrique.”
“Wow.”
Enrique quietly accepted this.
***
The Saintess is uncomfortable. Ivan realized this self-evident fact anew.
There were many reasons. Perhaps owing to having ground through battlefields since childhood, the Saintess was excessively emotional, seriously devout, and even in tidy dress required occasional gaze management. (Of course, Ivan being a person of common sense, he takes no interest in a priest’s body.)
Of course, if there was a greatest reason besides those, it was that she was a major orphanage donor rivaling Elizaveta.
Fundamentally one cannot have an equal relationship with the person holding the purse strings. Following this reasoning, Ivan tended always to maintain a proper distance from the orphanage’s donors.
“Ah…… Lord. Behold this beautiful sight……”
The Saintess walked sobbing from the orphanage entrance onward. Naturally the orphanage children had swarmed around her, squealing.
Faces brimming with vitality and plump cheeks, with no trace of poverty visible anywhere. The one wearing the poorest appearance in this orphanage was Ivan alone……!
The facility’s fittings were excellent, and every door opened smoothly on cleanly oiled hinges. Soft sponge was meticulously padded onto corridor ends and furniture corners.
Even this thoroughness……!
Eyes brimming, the Saintess looked at a large drawing scrawled on one corner of the orphanage building.
The scrawl some mischievous child had drawn was a picture of a bearded freak handing out presents with a scowl……
It was a passage where the children’s love could be felt so keenly that the Saintess finally pressed at her eyes and had to lean against the wall.
“You have already become a good father……”
“Oh, good heavens.”
“The finest relationships are, by nature, those born of the heart……. Brother Kirilts…… you dazzle me so…… ah, Lord……”
“I think she’s trying to kill me laughing. Disciple. This is getting to be a bit much for me. May I go on ahead?”
“You may not.”
Enrique clutched her forehead in agony.
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